3D Game Creation In the Near Future

Lets say I have the goal of making a few hit flash games. Mobile or Computer. Enough momentum to get players, potential collaborators and envious programmers to know my company name and for me to revel in the years it took to reach success.

Afterwords the future is important to me. My end goal is not to be a flash programmer as amazing as it is, but to conquer a few very big game ideas as well as making little games (flash or not). Things that would not be satisfying if done with as3 and/or flash. It has to be 3D, and if programmed well, run smoothly.

At the current moment what are my options? It seems C, C++, and C# are all great for getting into the thick of the low level stuff. As well as the option of prebuilt engines like Epic’s Unreal and XNA studios that let you dive into coding.

I also would like to know what my future options are. Lets say I make a few hit games within the next 4 years. After that time span will learning to use something like XNA be pointless? It seems like there would be nextgen consoles by then. Are the C languages the best route?

And possibly more importantly, If I wanted to collab with a team, or join a large game company what language would they greatly appreciate me knowing that I could also use in the here and now to make small 3D projects? I really want to qualify in the game industry in the future. The next languages I learn could bring that to light or cause another few years of learning before I can be accepted into the ranks.

Basically you can’t go wrong with C/C++ but as all professionals know a good programmer is not tied to single language, good programming skills are transferable. Give me a language and I can be “pro” with it in days basically, there are actually very few language specific stuff in most languages all the other stuff is transferable. Focusing on language is totally the wrong focus point, you can start making games in GameMaker for all I care, just start and do something.

If you want to go solo or small team I would definitely recommend using something like Unity3D for 3D stuff, I mean you can’t beat that for small indie projects and the workflow is awesome. For 2D I would stay with Flash even for larger games, Flash evolved a lot in last years its no longer tied to web it has a lot of number one apps on mobile appstores or even on Steam.

Microsoft recently announced that they will stop all future development with XNA. If you really want to make a ‘hit game’, I would suggest creating mobile games, because it takes very long to create an indie game (2 years?), and unless you create minecraft, your name won’t be stapled to people’s minds.

What I think, is that you should not look at ‘creating hit games’ as your goal, because it is very likely that you won’t get to that level. Just create flash games as a hobby, with that in the back of your head. And just like any other hobby, soccer for example, you won’t make a living out of it unless you are talented, started at young age and did nothing else in your life.

Also, it really helps to create some sort of artwork, or at least look at it on a daily basis. Creating the artwork yourself really bumps up the quality of your games.

It was hypothetical. I firmly believe that with enough time and energy anything can be achieved.
So since I never stop programming and learning, It would be great misfortune to never make a great enough game to become a “hit”.

Thats not really the discussion though. The most I can simplify my question is I want to know the best road to 3D game development in this day and age, and what lies down the road in that department.

Currently on the table: Unity3D, C/C++
I didn’t have high hopes for XNA even with it being responsible for games like Torchlight, and Hell Yeah!
I suppose sHTiF is right. The language doesn’t make the programmer. But it does make the program… so I simply need to know the best tool for the job.

“Q: How do you create this game?
A: I’ve programmed everything with C++ and DirectX (OpenGL for the first version). For the voxel sprites, I created my own voxel editor.” is from the game creators blog that made cube world. The video I linked is of that game for anyone oblivious to what I’m talking about.
I suppose this further emphasizes that C++ is the road I should take?

I do know a little C++ made a program or two with it. A full game even. I know nothing about DirectX so I suppose my next step is to research that.

ok wtf. Truefire you just blew my mind man.
I didn’t know a thing about directX, I didn’t even know it was microsoft related. But to think that the freakin Xbox is short for DirectX box. W… T…. F….
(continues reading)

ok wtf. Truefire you just blew my mind man.
I didn’t know a thing about directX, I didn’t even know it was microsoft related. But to think that the freakin Xbox is short for DirectX box. W… T…. F….
(continues reading)

I read this post thinking ‘ErmMahGawd’ my mind is going to be blown!
Then I read the post above this, and I my mind was not blown :C

It was hypothetical. I firmly believe that with enough time and energy anything can be achieved.
So since I never stop programming and learning, It would be great misfortune to never make a great enough game to become a “hit”.

I have to disagree. Creative works are more than just time spent, otherwise we would be drowning in mega hits from all sides. Time is far form the only factor, vision and talent is also extremely important to stand out from the masses. I’ve seen tons of people pour time into things but end up with a crappy result because the time was not directed in a good way.

Guys I appreciate the friendly slap in the face that I may never make a hit game in my life. Its great to be “realistic”. I’m just not really for that. I will pour every last ounce of myself into my art. Maybe what I said was in the wrong light. Maybe I don’t want a “hit” I just want a “success”. No bugs, smooth fun gameplay, everything else a great game would have. If I make a game that I see as an equal to some of my favorite games and nobody cares, I’ll still consider it a success.

Anyone hear heard of a game called Hydrophobia? That game is beautiful. I have never in my life seen a game that boasted such beautiful, such realistic water ever. Looking up reviews of it I was disgusted to find how many people were bagging on it. Wrote the game devs an email telling them how much I appreciated the game, and they wrote back a fairly long email thanking me.
They built a great game IMO, nobody came. But I consider it a great success.

Besides… at the end of the day I’m not making great games for other people. I’m making the games nobody else ever did. The ones I could never find no matter how much searching I did. I’m 19, I have a lot of time left to make something great, but talking about it here and now affects nothing. I prefer action.

Yeah… I’ve thought about it. But I don’t like the programming languages I would have to learn, other then C#. Its also too close to home. I’d rather start learning something much different then the stuff in the flash game world. Thats a great idea though.

AC, what programming languages do you already know? If you are new to programming, I suggest you start with MSWLogo, Game Maker or Stencyl.

actionscript 3.0 for a few years. Countless programs, prototypes, and games. But not a single one that I deem worthy of releasing yet. I’m not new to programming at all. And IMO the programs you have listed aren’t very great tools for learning about programming, as much as they are good for learning about game design and the logic involved even though I think I remember Game Maker or Stencyl allowing some programming as well as the usual click and drag nonsense.

To learn about progamming, you should learn the languages that you get on your uni, like C, Java, C++, Arduino, etc. People who look on this forum usually prefer visual programming languages, and MSWLogo, Game Maker, Stencyl, stuff like that are a very good introduction to game logic/programming.

If you are pretty experienced, you can start on actually making games to publish. After a while you should be able to create anything that you come up with. If you can’t come up with anything to make, stop doing whatever you’re doing, and have a walk around town or something, and you will probably have an amazing idea when you come back.

Halfway through development of a really crappy proof of concept FPS game. opengl is really awesome.
made a loader that loads models I create in blender. I think if I try really hard I could complete a 3D FPS game for 1GAM. It’ll be really simplistic, but my goal is for it to exist and function with mostly no bugs. : P

@JohnnyBohnny I think thats good advice. I don’t like Java though. C++, arduino, maybe ruby on rails, and of course as3 sound like my current direction. Not sure what kind of holes that leaves in my education of languages. I could do as you say and learn them all but… eh. Time isn’t on my side at this point in my life.

Can anyone tell me, Haxe can export to Flash, iOS, C++, and some others, so why isn’t everyone using it? Is there a disadvantage in performance?

Haxe is growing, but it’s still a pretty obscure option in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes you have annoying situations where a flash library for some portal website doesn’t work quite as it should in Haxe like it does with AS3 (the kong one works fine though). The performance of Haxe is pretty superior to that of AS3 though. I recommend it to everybody who is interested.

So it is just a new language, and the audience needs to grow? I tried it today, and the only disadvantage I found, was that once you’ve installed Haxe, you still need to install an IDE, C++ libraries, Java libraries, etc. It’s just a lot more difficult to get started with it compared to AS3. Not having any tutorials/books/good ‘getting started’ documentation does not help ether.

@ArcStudios, what programming language are you using for your OpenGL project?

@JohnnyBohnny C++ its pretty straightforward actually. A few differences in overal syntax between as3 and c++ but they are surprisingly similar. Then I just have to set my mentality to knowing everything is in 3D, and know the methods of opengl and I’m also using SDL with it which really helps.

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